How far do we have to stretch the picture
before pixelating the human texture?
-Shing02
1
Late on a Sunday afternoon in March, a black MD helicopter pummeled the air above the South River Forest. The ether was heavy; everywhere reeked of chemical fire.
Lieutenant Tim Carter—a stocky man with sharp blue eyes—stood on Constitution Road gritting his teeth just outside of his state trooper vehicle. With wide eyes and bated breath, he fiddled his fingertips against his thumbs. To his left and right, caravans of police vehicles: cobalt blue Dodge Chargers with orange lettering that read “Georgia State Patrol,” navy blue SUVs with red stripes that spelled “Atlanta Police.” The road teemed with fellow officers, all of whom were late to respond to the forest defenders’ invasion of the Old Prison Farm. They missed the opportunity to kick the shit out of the balaclava-covered protesters who had burned front-end loaders, a trailer, UTVs, and the surveillance tower, but now were ready for a second chance.
“Listen up,” commanded Carter through a black megaphone, “I don’t wanna have to keep coming out here and chasing these freaks. Whoever you take into custody tonight gets charged with domestic terrorism. Those are the orders.”
The radio on his right shoulder buzzed. “Tetterton to Carter. Stoneflies move out.”
“Move out!” shouted Lieutenant Carter.
Officers with rifles and helmets rushed into the rocky dirt parking lot. State troopers wearing ballistic vests followed with black pistols drawn. APD officers in black uniforms mixed in with the troopers as easily as threads in a loom. Carter and two of his most trusted colleagues carried command from behind.
“Hamilton, take ten into the camp. Washington, left side towards the Farm. I’ll take the field,” shouted Carter. As the lieutenant looked behind him, he found a large TV camera pointed at his face.
He put a hand in front of the lens. “Sir,” he said to the camera-person, neither verifiably male or female, “ma’am…whatever, just stay fifty feet back.” The person in jeans and a cut-off T-shirt moved aside long enough to avoid Carter, then scurried after the squadron running through the trees and onto the long lawn.
At the end of the field was a small stage where members of a band were putting down their instruments and holding up their hands. A large, multi-colored bouncy house sat in the middle of the field with two intrepid festival-goers still playing inside.
“Take care of that,” Carter ordered to an officer nearby.
A lanky figure with an assault rifle and a Kevlar helmet trucked towards the bouncy house, stuck his rifle inside and yelled, “Out now.”
A woman inside held up her hands and replied, “Bro, peace and love. I was just bouncing.”
The officer fired several shots through the top tube of the bouncy house. The back wall dropped completely. The two inside darted towards the exit. Another officer threw them down against the fractured tarmac.
Officers in the left corner of the field besieged a circle of protesters whose cries grew louder with each call and response:
“Stop Cop City!”
“Stop Cop City!”
“Viva viva Tortuguita!”
“Viva viva Tortuguita!”
Sergeant Washington, flanking left with his unit, shouted, “Audio!” All the men in the unit pulled up noise-canceling headphones from their necks. Three men from Washington’s ranks hurried forward towards the circle of protesters holding an LRAD sound cannon. Elsewhere, tear gas wafted upwards from the edges of the field. Uniformed men threw pepper balls at protesters as they tried to escape the blitz.
The sound cannon unleashed a harrowing blast against the circle of protesters.
Carter, in the middle of the field, cracked a cocksided smile as he watched the turbulent onslaught unfold. Officers of various agencies tackled more festival-goers and handcuffed them with thick zip ties. The thrashing footsteps coming up behind him now gave him reason to smile completely: fully armored state troopers in green fatigues trotted swiftly onto the field.
One of the soldiers scampered to Carter’s side and held up a fist for a triumphant bump.
“We have children here!” shouted a voice from inside the forest. Through the trees, Carter witnessed little bodies clinging to their mothers’ chest. “We have children here!”
Carter rubbed his forehead in disbelief. He turned to a soldier nearby and said, “Escort those hippies outta here.” Halfway through his order, he spied one of the band members darting from the back of the stage into the woods. Thirst aflame, Lieutenant Carter sprinted full force towards the back of the field. “Got one.”
Later that night, Carter stood on Constitution Road with Lieutenants Hamilton and Washington wisecracking and directing DeKalb County paddy wagons into the parking lot. The three of them leaned against a heavily armored vehicle as big as a trash truck emblazoned with dripping white letters that read THE BEAST. Towards the forest, a patrol officer told a line of seated, zip-tied protesters to shut the hell up as two other policemen fingerprinted a group of forest defenders—the lady cop taking the prints, the man holding his rifle.
“Lieutenant Carter, sir,” called a DeKalb County officer, stepping from the parking lot onto the road.
Carter walked towards the officer.
“Sergeant Carl Jeffries,” said the officer, extending his hand to Carter. “Lieutenant, we got a Kayla Carter in custody. This any relation to you?” Jeffries handed him a license.
Carter’s eyes grew large. His lips parted. He stared down at the license, unable to answer Jeffries.
“Sir?” asked Jeffries.
“Did…did you charge her yet?” asked Carter.
“No sir, but…” Jeffries hesitated. “I can’t just let her go. I was in the middle of an arrest, and she got in my face. Started screaming at me. I had two other officers right beside me.”
Carter looked behind him at Hamilton and Washington smoking cigarettes. Then, turning back towards Jeffries, he said in a whisper, “Sarge, I know your hands are tied on this one. How ’bout you just slap her with obstructing law enforcement? Next week, I’ll take you to Ruth’s Chris, and you’ll go home with a box of the finest Dominican cigars, and Kayla won’t spend forever in lock-up.”
Sergeant Jeffries squinted at Lieutenant Carter, carefully studying the state trooper. He nodded and said, “Yeah, I thought your girl looked kinda Spanish.” He paused to think a moment. “Alright, Lieutenant, I look forward to that steak.” He raised an eyebrow at Carter. “And a recommendation to the GSP if I ever need one.”
“Absolutely, Sergeant.”
As Jeffries turned away, Carter grabbed his hand. “Sarge, we didn’t have this conversation.”
“Course not, Lieutenant.”
Carter, breathing heavily, looked down the dark road. In the parking lot nearby, protesters began chanting, “Who murdered Tortuguita?”
“Georgia State Patrol.”
“Who murdered Tortuguita?”
“Georgia State Patrol.”
2
The next morning, Tim Carter lay in bed with a shirt over his eyes, trying to eke out another few minutes of sleep after a long night. He heard his wife get up and sit on the edge of the bed. Suddenly, she left the room and was talking on the phone shortly after. Carter snatched the shirt off his eyes and stared straight up at the ceiling.
“Tim! Tim!”
Carter sat up in the bed, rubbing his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Maria, in pajamas, trembled in the doorway. “Kayla”—she could barely muster the words—“s-she’s at DeKalb County Jail.”
“What?!” he shouted, exaggerating his tone. He stared at the dresser in front of the bed, shaking his head from side to side. “No. No no no no.”
“She said Kayla went to a festival yesterday, and the cops raided it,” Maria continued. “Tim!” She stood in front of the bed now. “It was the same one, wasn’t it? No one told you they picked her up?”
“What?!” he squeaked in feigned disbelief. He shook his head in slow, overwrought strokes.
“Oh my God,” he huffed, swinging his legs out of the bed. He went to the closet, pulled on a pair of jeans, and grabbed a button-up from its hanger. He turned around to Maria, saying, “Why was Kayla even out there?”
“Tim,” scoffed Maria.
“You’re right. I just… Right on the tail of a promotion,” he pleaded, sighing with exasperation. “What are the charges?”
“I… Um, Rachelle said trespassing, uh…obstructing law enforcement.”
With his shirt open, he went to the dresser and began strapping his gun holster onto his belt.
“Tim.” She stood square in front of him demanding his attention. “What’s Weelaunee?”
“It’s what the hippies call the South River Forest.”
“Cop City?”
“The Training Center, yeah.”
“But I don’t understand.”
Carter stopped buttoning his shirt. Embarrassment, regret flooded his eyes. “She either got mistaken for Antifa or was deep in the forest. My crew cleared the field.” He hung his head and shook it side to side. “Goddammit. She probably slept on one of those nasty boat beds.”
When Carter looked back at Maria, she was nearly hyperventilating.
Carter, playing the trope, shut his eyes, dropped his chin as if defeated, and sighed. “Alright,” he said, grabbing his keys.
He walked to Maria, still standing in the doorway, dazed from the news. He put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Tetterton can probably get her out on bail, but it’s gonna get ugly around here.”
Carter kissed his wife on the forehead and darted out the door.
In the living room, Maria stood at the sofa amidst bright sunlight and ponderous silence. A portrait of Kayla as a child stared at her from across the room—her big black eyes, her long dark hair, her copper skin, that luminous smile on pink, tender lips. From afar, the sound of sirens was growing louder.
3
Freshly shaven and dressed in a crisp uniform, Lieutenant Tim Carter walked behind the Sheriff’s wide backside through a stark white corridor. The Sheriff opened a metal door four inches thick. They walked through another corridor, at the end of which the Sheriff unlocked another fortified door and let Carter pass onto the first floor of cells.
“The pod’s down and to the right. 4SE 200,” said the Sheriff.
Most of the female inmates staring at him as he stepped forward were much darker than he. A couple of them glared at the White state trooper with disdain. Others just looked tired, others completely expressionless as if the life had been sucked from their stale bodies.
Arriving at the pod, an inmate at the bars sucked her teeth at Lieutenant Carter and said, “Whatchu want?”
Carter peered past the woman at Kayla, sitting with both her bottom and her feet on the cage’s narrow bench reading a book.
“Fuck,” Kayla mumbled under her breath. She put down the book, winced as she stood, and walked to the bars. It hurt her to even stand. Her lip was cut. The left side of her neck was swollen with throbbing purple bruises.
The sight of Kayla left Carter speechless, bristling with rage, shame, and confusion.
“Dad,” Kayla shuddered. A tear fell down her nose.
Carter gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes at her.
The silence he buttressed was unbearable.
“Jeffries did this to you?” Carter asked.
Kayla’s lip trembled. “They thought Sierra was one of the”—she searched for the uncoined term—“balaclava people.” Kayla looked past her father to the cell across from her. Sierra, a young White woman, was staring back at her. “I told the officer she had nothing to do with anything. We were just vibing to the music. And”—more tears streamed down her face—“I grabbed her, and when I did, that fucking coward hit me with his stick.” She motioned towards her back. “He jumped on top of me and pinned me with his knees, cursing at me. I couldn’t breathe, and if the other officer hadn’t come up, I woulda…”
Kayla began to hyperventilate.
Carter looked over his shoulder at Sierra. “Why were you out there?” he beseeched, turning back to Kayla, his tone earnest, his eyes heavy.
She could hardly muster a response. As if casting blame, Carter looked over his shoulder again at Sierra. Their eyes met, both of them stern in their presence.
“Property’s not more important than people, Lieutenant,” Sierra insisted, her hands wrapped around the bars.
“Bitch, sit down,” said Sierra’s cellmate, annoyed at the comment.
Carter raised a single eyebrow and turned back to Kayla.
“It was just a music festival, Dad,” Kayla explained. “We were talking about Weelaunee in my public policy class. I…I didn’t know about the explosions or anything.”
Carter took a big breath in. “Why were you obstructing law enforcement? You know better.”
Kayla had no response; the silence grew heavy again.
Carter looked at his feeble daughter, finally saying, “Captain Tetterton already called the judge. Your mom’ll be here in a couple of hours once the paperwork goes through.”
The lieutenant turned around, glared at Sierra once more, and walked back towards the Sheriff standing at the exit.
“I’m sorry!” Kayla cried, but the heavy door just slammed behind him.
4
Lieutenant Carter opens the front door of the DeKalb County Police Department’s Zone 3 building and walks towards the receptionist. Her name tag reads “Misty Greene.” He flashes his badge at her, saying, “Lieutenant Carter, Georgia State Patrol. I’m conducting an investigation into last night’s raid on behalf of GBI. Is Officer Jeffries here?”
“Down the hall and to the left,” answers Misty in a Southern drawl, shuffling papers, barely looking up.
Carter marches down the hall and flings open Jeffries’ door.
From her desk, Misty hears a thwack, then clamor. Carter yells, “You son of a bitch!”
“Get the fuck off me!” Jeffries shouts back.
Misty gets up from her desk and hurries down the hall.
Thwack, thwack.
Three other uniformed officers rush past Misty’s desk towards Jeffries’ office.
Commotion.
The zip of a zip tie.
Misty Greene stands against the cinder block wall crying.
Carter screams, “How you like that? You sick piece of…”
Two other DCPD officers pull Carter out of the office and throw him against the wall. One raises his hand to strike him, but he ducks and delivers a quick blow to the solar plexus with his right while the left blocks a blow from the second incoming officer. With the right free, he uppercuts the second officer. A third officer comes from behind with his truncheon, but Carter, at lightning speed, spins and swats it out of the officer’s hand with a roundhouse kick. The truncheon lands in Carter’s hand. Panting, he’s standing over the three officers either too scared or too hurt to do any more.
He slaps the truncheon against the palm of the other hand and walks out.
When Carter pushes open the door of the building, Kayla’s sitting on the hood of his car smiling. “Hell yeah, Daddy,” she exclaims as they slap fives.
They both get in the car, but Carter doesn’t start the ignition. Kayla is looking at him with something heavy on her heart. “I need you, Dad,” she says. “Don’t let me down.”
Ta ta ta. Ta ta ta.
“Roll this window down.”
Lieutenant Carter’s eyes barely open to a squint, he awoke to Captain Tetterton’s ruddy face just outside his car window.
“Roll this thing down,” ordered Tetterton.
Coming to, Carter rolled down the window.
“Long night, L-T?” asked Tetterton, then spitting out brown goo from his mouth and pushing the dip back down into his gums with his tongue. “Sorry about Kayla, brother-man. Dunno how you ended up with a radical for a daughter.” Tetterton shook his head side to side but didn’t wait for a response:
“My nephew was out there in 2020 protesting. I shot him in the leg one time with a rubber bullet, and his Che-Guevara-ass got a banking job. Some folks just gotta learn the hard way, I reckon.” Tetterton sighed and hoisted his hands up to his hips. “Anyway, already got Louis James, Esquire on it. He’ll get it straightened out with Georgia Tech’n’ whatnot. And once those indictments come out against those forest fucks, it’ll be business as usual.
“Speaking of which: we got some Feds coming to town. I got reporters all over my ass about the Turtle fella. Need someone a little more low-profile to show them around. Know what I mean?” He nodded like his words were holy. “Lawyer fees ain’t cheap; so we’ll chalk it up as OT. All you gotta do is put on some khakis and act like a developer. Alright?”
Carter, still half asleep, was rubbing his eyes, hardly computing the captain’s proposal.
Tetterton spit out another round of murky goo from his mouth and looked around the GSP parking lot. “Clean work last night, by the way. I mean, just stellar.”
Carter grunted a little in response.
“You got your Karate thing tonight?” asked Tetterton.
“Kung Fu, yeah,” replied Carter, looking Tetterton in the eye.
“Aight, then,” nodded the captain, “kick some ass.”
5
That evening, Lieutenant Carter came home in jeans and a t-shirt, drunk enough that he stumbled up the steps to the door. The house smelled like soup and was quiet except for the low murmur of women’s voices behind the door to Kayla’s room. He crept to the kitchen for another drink. He unscrewed the bottle, opened his throat, and guzzled down the bourbon.
“Qué te pasó?” asked Maria from behind.
“Yeeeaaahh,” he replied, raising his voice and turning around. “Just had a couple of…”
To his surprise, Kayla stood in the threshold between the living room and the kitchen. The bruises on her neck were more unsightly now that she was clean and back in her childhood home. Carter braced himself against the counter, shocked to see the damage.
Maria stared at him, shaking her head in denial. “She went to a music festival, Tim,” she pleaded. “A music festival. The whole left side of her back is bruised. Thank God they didn’t break her spine.”
“Kayla, baby,” said Carter stumbling over to the dining room table, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. There were reports of explosions, and we got orders to take the forest. They’re trying to get that Training Center built ASAP.”
“So what?” Maria exclaimed, a little more fiery now. “You just beat down anyone who gets in your way? Even on public property?”
“She shouldn’t’ve been out there in the first place, goddamit!” The Lieutenant slammed his fists down on the table. “Everyone bitches and moans that crime’s up. Then we actually do something about it, and now everyone thinks they’re Che fucking Guevara.”
Standing behind her mother, tears streamed down Kayla’s face.
“What are you doing about it, Tim? Beating on college kids?”
“A lot of those kids are Antifa, Maria,” replied Carter. “They derail trains and burn police cars. You saw the news. How are we supposed to know who’s dangerous and who’s not?”
“So you just charge people with domestic terrorism?” Kayla interjected, almost in a whisper.
“Little girl,” responded Lieutenant Carter, peering at her, “you’d be in jail right now if it weren’t for me.”
“That’s how you see me—a little girl.” She sucked up her tears and cleared her throat. “Anyone who doesn’t stay in their little boxes and slave away for JPMorgan Chase are just second-class citizens, stupid hippy kids. They don’t matter, so you can just ruin their lives by calling them terrorists.
“Those forest defenders aren’t terrorists,” Kayla insisted. “The APD officer that shot Rayshard Brooks is the terrorist. The officers who destroyed Tyre Nichols; they’re the terrorists.”
Carter pushed himself up from the table and shouted, “If it weren’t for this terrorist, you wouldn’t have a roof over your head. You wouldn’t have health insurance or your scholarship.”
Kayla trembled in the doorway, then quickly darted towards her room.
Carter plopped back into his chair defeated.
In the silence that followed the voice of a newscaster surfaced from the TV in their bedroom: “Coming up next, angry radicals burn machinery and hurl explosives at police officers at the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. Words from the Mayor and the President of the Atlanta Police Foundation when we return.”
"You know what the real problem is, Tim?” said Maria as the news cut to commercials. She stood at the other end of the table, holding the back of a chair with both hands. “No one wants to listen. Nobody wants to talk. Anything different is just a threat.”
“I was just doing my job,” Tim said to her from his seat. “That’s all I was doing. I got the orders, and I followed them. You know that.” Remorse slowly replaced the insolence in his eyes. “What else do you want from me?”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Maria stood in the frame between the kitchen and the living room crying. Abruptly, she turned away and went into their bedroom.
Lieutenant Carter stared into nothing as Maria’s desperate sobs filled the house.
Minutes later, in the backyard, he was beating a baseball bat against an oak tree. Thwack! Thwack! The bat broke, the barrel flailing off behind him. Carter fell to his knees still holding the handle. With his right hand, he beat the bat’s splintered half against the earth, shouting, “Nothing! All of this for nothing!”
6
Tim Carter spent two days handling police paperwork, meeting with the family lawyer, talking to the Georgia Tech staff about Kayla’s suspension, and having arduous conversations with both Maria and Kayla about the Public Safety Training Center. There had been no easy answer, no clear solution, the complexity of their plight infinitely tangled and centuries old.
Carter had trouble sleeping on Wednesday night and wanted nothing more than to get out of the city. Before dawn on Thursday, he’d requested sick leave, left a note on the kitchen table, and headed south.
By mid-morning, he stood at the edge of the Ocmulgee River not far from where he’d grown up. He’d brought his pole and bait, but his boyhood fishing hole was now home to a route of concrete slabs that comprised the runoff channel of a newly constructed apartment community.
Hanging over the bed of the truck, he glared at the five-story buildings with disgust and talked through his grievances as if the buildings had ears.
Half an hour later, he found himself outside CC’s Bait and Tackle looking into a dark room where the walls he had often browsed as a boy had been stripped of their wares. As he walked back to his truck, another double cab stopped in its tracks just past the tackle shop and scurried backwards into the gravel parking lot.
“Tim?” said the driver, rolling down his window.
Carter peered at the man, not making out the acquaintance.
Man, it’s me, Petey.” Petey wore a cut-off T-shirt and a gold chain, a baseball cap and blue-tinted sunglasses. He sported an unkempt, strawberry-blonde beard and spoke with a flat, drawn-out twang. “I ain’t seen you since high school,” said Petey, getting out of the truck. “Whatcha doing here?”
“Took the day off to do some fishing.” He looked in the direction of the apartment community. “How long those apartments been there?”
Petey nodded towards the apartments in the distance. “Bout five years that Mussolini, Incorporated been in Hickory.”
“Mussolini?”
Petey looked back at his truck. “Eh man, you wanna Mountain Dew? I got a cooler in the back.”
“Sure.”
Cracking the can of Mountain Dew, Petey answered, “It’s like this: Falcon Residential built a set of apartments downtown. They were hosting barbecues and concerts, and everybody loved ’em. Well”—he nodded to the tailgate of his truck-—“Target started setting up shop, creating jobs at their warehouses’n’whatnot; so Falcon decided they wanted to expand.”
Petey and Tim took a seat on the tailgate of Petey’s truck.
“They started buying up properties, mostly Black neighborhoods, but mine got bought up too,” continued Petey. “Then them and Target started funneling paper into the Hickory Police Foundation and buying off politicians. So now the damn cops is basically big money’s security guards.” Petey shook his head. “I never did trust the government, but I ain’t think we’d be damn Mussolini.”
“You keep saying Mussolini,” Tim replied.
“Hell yeah. Big money and big guns controllin’ people’s lives. That’s fascism. Musso-fucking-lini.” Petey glared at Tim side-eyed. “Ain’t you never seen the History Channel?”
Tim half-chuckled at the country demeanor he’d left behind.
Petey slurped his Mountain Dew. “We was having Town Hall meetings. Group was called ‘Falcon Gotta Fly,’ but first time we started hooting and hollering out front of Falcon’s office, police locked up six people. Calling them… get this: domestic terrorists.”
Petey was angry now, his face red with heat. He sipped his soda and said, “I got a whole damn arsenal of rifles and grenades. Like to show them what a real terrorist look like. Osama Bin Petey.” He slurped his Mountain Dew and shook his head with disgust. “I mean, damn, property ain’t more important than people. Am I wrong? Fucking up our fishing holes’n’shit.”
While silence stood between them, Tim studied Petey’s profile.
“You got kids, Petey?”
“Yep, only reason I ain’t unleashed Godzilla on these motherfuckers. Terrorism charge is at least a dime in the pen. If you’re lucky.”
Carter pulled out his phone.
“Oh shit,” Petey exclaimed. “What time is it?”
“12:30.”
“I gotta get back to work.” Petey rushed to the driver’s side. Tim followed slowly.
“If you around later,” Petey said, “I usually get me a tall boy at the Applebee’s when I get off.”
Tim nodded.
“Good seeing ya, Timmy. And watch out for Mussolini.”
As Petey sped away, Carter looked down at his phone. The text from Maria read: “Can we talk? I’m worried about you.”
7
The lieutenant in full uniform and Kayla in her finest clothes leave their seats and walk down the aisle towards the podium holding hands. He places the 400-page dossier on the stand as Kayla gives the technician the pen drive. In front of them sit the sixteen members of the Atlanta City Council looking down at them from the long, crescent-shaped mahogany dais.
Just as Lieutenant Carter takes a breath to deliver their presentation, he hears the chatter of his daughter’s teeth. He looks over and smiles. “We got this,” he whispers.
“Members of City Council, my fellow men and women in uniform, Mayor Dickens,” begins Lieutenant Carter, “my daughter Kayla and I, along with the help of a several subject-matter experts, have put together a full-length proposal for a more just and community-oriented police academy.”
Suddenly, Kayla looks at her father with rage and says, “You hear me? I said, ‘Get up!’”
The Chamber begins to shake. Footsteps pummel the ground beneath him.
Carter half opened his eyes to find a rifle pointing at his face. He threw up his hands, though still on his back in a small clearing near the river. His fishing pole laid at his feet. An empty beer can sat next to his cooler. The woman beyond the shaft of the gun was Black, middle-aged, and elegant, bright with ruby earrings. She wore jeans and a well-cut T-shirt.
“You need to move, or I’m calling for backup,” said the woman.
“Can I sit up, ma’am?”
“Wish you would,” she answered.
“Ma’am,” Carter said, sitting up, “I’m a cop.”
She scoffed. “Not in my jurisdiction.”
She flashed him her HPD badge, and said, “So you get off my property now, or it’s the cuffs.”
She cocked the rifle.
“Alright, alright, I’m gone,” Carter capitulated. He gathered his things and scurried up the footpath back to his truck.
“Damn,” he said to himself, looking into the rearview. His hair was sticking up. The muscles in his face twitched just slightly.
Slowly he drove away, often rubbing his fingers through his hair. The fields beside him had been freshly tilled. Bits of green were emerging from the trees on either side.
After a few minutes, he passed a mom’n’pop mechanic shop—the paint falling off the building, the cars in the lot old and run-down. Two men were standing at the hood of a car arguing. When he got to the stop sign beyond the shop, he chuckled, then furrowed his brow looking side to side. His jaw dropped, and he half-chuckled once more.
“Property,” he mused. “Property.”
He made the turn and stepped on the gas.
Down the road aways, he pulled into a gas station, pulled out his phone, and called Kayla on video. When she didn’t pick up, he called her twice more.
“Hey Dad,” she answered reluctantly.
Looking into the screen, he watched her take a seat on the front porch. Her hair was braided in twintails. She wore a blue hoodie, and the bruises of her face were healing.
“Kayla! It’s …” Though wide-eyed and enthusiastic, he struggled to find the words. “That day, she said it. ‘Property’s not more important than people.’”
“Who? Sierra?” Kayla asked.
“Yeah, on Monday. It didn’t mean anything. Until today.”
Kayla smiled with disbelief. “Wait, are you really saying this to me right now?”
“With the Cop City thing and what I read about Blackhall Studios…” Carter sighed. “You were right. It’s not about public safety. It’s about control. It’s about the money.”
She looked away, gathering her thoughts and courage. “Dad, um, it’s always been about control. I mean, when have the cops ever cared about the people?”
“Are you crazy?” Carter retorted. “You know how many times I’ve responded to shoot-outs or domestic violence calls and almost died?!” He caught himself and took a moment to look at his daughter. Despite the deep squint of his eyes, they still held tenderness, still carried admiration for her tenacity and compassion.
“Kayla, look, we could argue about history all day, but the bottom line is: this whole thing don’t sit right with me. I got some research to do, but then, me and you…I want us to write something up—whether anything comes of it or not. ’Cause you’re one of the best writers I know.” He pursed his lips, coming to terms with his words. “And we gotta at least try, right?”
Kayla scrunched up her face and asked, “Is this some type of joke, Dad?”
“No, baby. No joke. Thing is…I see you, Kayla. You’re bright and powerful, and I see you.”
A wide, zestful grin stole across Kayla’s face. She was giddy with prospect.
“Tell your mom I’m bringing home pizza. Alright?” Carter concluded.
Kayla nodded, still smiling.
After he had hung up the phone, Tim Carter looked at himself in the mirror. There was pride in his lips, ease in his eyes. He put his hands on the keys but stopped himself and said, “You’re breaking the first rule of police work, Tim.”
Lieutenant Carter then pulled the keys out of the ignition and stepped inside the gas station in dire need of some coffee.
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